At a panel this afternoon, another poster of LEGO Marvel homage cover art was revealed and the artist, Dan Veesenmeyer shared it on Twitter. I managed to get almost all of the LEGO Marvel variant covers the first time around and I'm pretty much out of the comic game, so I hope these remain posters.

The Hulk cover is from 2006, while Tales of Asgard is from waaaaaaay back in 1968 and no longer published. I mean, I have recently seen spoiler warnings pertaining to Bladerunner used in articles discussing Bladerunner 2049, but I think once you start to measure spoilers in terms of decades, you should expect confused looks more than sympathy.

Oh, I get where the tribute comics are... Tales of Asgard is actually a variant for The Mighty Thor. But both Thor and Hulk were a bit convoluted (or dead) as of a few months ago. I know there have been developments (I just can't bring myself to finish Secret Empire yet), but having them show up as variants is telling.

I know Thor was a key part of the...whatever Marvel's calling the bold marketing ploy of replacing a bunch of their more famous white males with females and minorities instead of actually coming up with _new_ characters. Hulk's present state I know nothing about.

...points out that there's going to be a Director's Cut of the 2-part Thor short film that's currently playing on the Internet and during ad breaks on TV. Word is, Thor and Hulk are going to be key players in that film. If Marvel has a hand in the marketing campaign for this video game, would you be surprised if they used it to squeeze out a bit of free press for their upcoming film?

PurpleDave wrote:I know Thor was a key part of the...whatever Marvel's calling the bold marketing ploy of replacing a bunch of their more famous white males with females and minorities instead of actually coming up with _new_ characters.

Funny how people seem to only complain about a lack of new characters in comics when females and minorities start to become more prominent.

joecrowaz on Flickr wrote:Flynn you little wussy with a purple robed fairy for an icon,

Flynn wrote:Funny how people seem to only complain about a lack of new characters in comics when females and minorities start to become more prominent.

Funny how people seem to misread intentions when it gives them a chance to play the Moral High Ground card. I collected all the Bat-titles back during the first time that they made someone other than Bruce Wayne wear the cowl for more than an issue or two. By the time it was over, I think pretty much everyone was itching to get back to normal. That was a white guy replacing a white guy.

Wolverine is one of the few Marvel characters I actually care about, so seeing them kill him off, and knowing it was done largely to spite Fox, was irritating. The fact that they appear to have brought him back only after Fox released Logan doesn't help matters any. I don't have any problem with X-23 as a character besides that it's a really lame superhero codename in spite of the logic behind how they came up with it. I thought the character shows promise in Logan, and while I don't yet know how I'll feel if Fox has her take on Wolverine's codename, I know full well that at Marvel it only came about because they were trying to supplant the Mutants with the Inhumans. So basically it felt like a repeat of Az-Bats, but with malicious intent.

I've actually seen someone cheer Captain Marvel for not merely being a feminized form of a male superhero's name, like Batgirl or Supergirl, which is depressingly amusing. After all, the name originally belonged to a white man, was given to a white woman, back to another white man, stolen from that company by Marvel, given to an alien man (who ended up also stealing the body-swapping limitation from the first character), then to a black female, the son of the alien male (with the same stolen body-switching thing), the daughter of the first alien male, a different alien who becomes the first alien (still with the body-switching), yet another completely different alien male (more body-switching), and finally a white human female who previously went by a feminized version of the same name. So, you know, not even a hint of hypocrisy there.

Thor and Captain America I know both have history with getting replaced, coming back, getting replaced again, and so on. Ironman doesn't.

So you've got Captain America getting replaced by a black male and Thor getting replaced by a female in 2014. In 2015, there's Wolverine (one of Marvel's two most popular characters in general) getting replaced by a female, and finally Ironman being replaced with a black, female teenager whose codename doesn't even match the name on the comic book. In two years Marvel "diversified" their stable, not by actually creating new characters, or by building up females and minorities that they already had around, but by swapping out Wolverine and the three flagship characters of the MCU. Honestly, it just feels like a really cheap ploy to court Millennials at the expense of alienating their now-probably-not-so-loyal fanbase. And yet they still won't greenlight a Black Widow movie even though, by the sounds of it, they could just have ScarJo read some phone books and beat a few people up and it'd be a success. They could probably even get the fans to self-finance the movie and call it a success with the sale of a single ticket. And the fact that the first female-led MCU movie will be Captain Marvel feels less like them thinking she's a big enough character to headline a movie, and more like thumbing their nose at WB regarding the name theft after they announced plans to release a movie about the original Captain Marvel.

PurpleDave wrote:In two years Marvel "diversified" their stable, not by actually creating new characters, or by building up females and minorities that they already had around, but by swapping out Wolverine and the three flagship characters of the MCU.

I mean, the thing about this "they're not creating new characters" thing is that these are actually new characters here. Like, Riri Williams isn't a black Tony Stark, she's a distinct character of her own. As is Sam Wilson, or Miles Morales. A better target of criticism for "they're not creating new characters" would be Nick Fury, who actually was race-bent, but everyone seems to be pretty happy with that one.

Sure, we can complain about the fact that diverse characters are only being used with existing flagship icons, not with actually new heroes, but that's as much a byproduct of the fact that existing titles are always going to sell better than brand new ones, and it's easier to take some risks with them. Marvel can afford to have the Thor change absolutely flop because it's an easy comic to change up and get good numbers again. A brand new title is, in general, far riskier to try progressive things with than the flagships.

More to the point, though, the thing about diversity and representation is that there isn't just one magic solution to make it work. Within comics, yeah, creating new characters is gonna help immensely. But taking existing characters and making them part of a more diverse community is an equally good tactic. Because the scales are so tipped, and have been for so long, it takes a lot more than just "create new characters" to even them out again.

And the fact that the first female-led MCU movie will be Captain Marvel feels less like them thinking she's a big enough character to headline a movie, and more like thumbing their nose at WB regarding the name theft after they announced plans to release a movie about the original Captain Marvel.

Um, you know Marvel announced Captain Marvel a full four years before DC announced their Shazam film?

joecrowaz on Flickr wrote:Flynn you little wussy with a purple robed fairy for an icon,

They're still burning the stable in an attempt to save it. And it's still a bad move. It backfired with Az-Bats, and I'm pretty sure the same stunt didn't go over very well with the whole Scarlet Spider storyline (at least, my boss at the time was pissed about the reveal).

Nick Fury being black was, as far as I was aware, restricted to the Marvel Ultimate universe and the MCU. Miles Morales I know was also created for the Ultimate universe, and rolled into the Marvel's take on the New-52 alongside Parker rather than completely replacing him. Ultimate was 100% about creating a new vision of old characters, as was the 2099 universe, and neither involved scuttling the regular titles to get there. I gotta give them an easy pass on both of those.

DC's Captain Marvel movie (albeit under a different name) was in the works before The Dark Knight came out in 2008. It got put on hiatus in 2013, and picked up again in and announced with Dwayne Johnson (who had been in talks since late 2007) attached on August 20, 2014. Marvel's Captain Marvel was planned to be part of ABC's Jessica Jones series, which wouldn't start development until 2010 (several years after the DC film had started getting shopped around), got rebuilt for Netflix in 2013, and dropped Captain Marvel for Trish Walker. _TWO_MONTHS_AFTER_ Dwayne Johnson's announcement, in October 2014, Marvel made their first announcement about a Captain Marvel film. So, again, thumbing their nose over the name theft. And once again bypassing a pretty much guaranteed slam dunk if they made a Black Widow film.

PurpleDave wrote:They're still burning the stable in an attempt to save it. And it's still a bad move. It backfired with Az-Bats, and I'm pretty sure the same stunt didn't go over very well with the whole Scarlet Spider storyline (at least, my boss at the time was pissed about the reveal).

Pulling two examples from the 90s that aren't even related to diversity doesn't really prove your point well. Ms. Marvel and Miles Morales have both been damned popular, the latter irrespective of being from the Ultimate universe (tellingly, he ported over to the main continuity when the Ultimate universe was destroyed). Carol Danvers is by miles the most popular iteration of Captain Marvel, and The Mighty Thor and Invincible Iron Man have been selling terrifically, despite most everyone agreeing the former was a bit crap. Diversity is not what's killing a long-dying industry, and point of fact Marvel's turn towards diversity years ago netted them a far better share of sales. If Marvel abandons that to try and gear itself towards its "loyal fanbase", it will continue to flounder as it becomes more and more culturally irrelevant.

In October 2014, Marvel made their first announcement about a Captain Marvel film. So, again, thumbing their nose over the name theft. And once again bypassing a pretty much guaranteed slam dunk if they made a Black Widow film.

I was wrong on my DC dates--the articles I had quickly pulled up were dated July 2017, but a quick trip to Wikipedia confirms your dates are correct. Nonetheless this is still twisting facts given that the script for the film was in progress as early as May 2013. This idea they only announced a Captain Marvel film to compete with DC is preposterous--she's by miles the best-known female superhero they have the rights to, and they were clearly avoiding Black Widow to get out of having to pay ScarJo a higher salary (which is, mind you, a spectacularly crappy reason, but somehow still less petty than your bizarre reasoning for their motivation).

joecrowaz on Flickr wrote:Flynn you little wussy with a purple robed fairy for an icon,

PurpleDave wrote:I know Thor was a key part of the...whatever Marvel's calling the bold marketing ploy of replacing a bunch of their more famous white males with females and minorities instead of actually coming up with _new_ characters.

I've been against this practice for years. The comics industry has needed diversification since the beginning, but just switching hero gender and race is just paying lip service to diversification. It's lazy and these characters will never be original.

These companies need to do the work, and invest the time and creativity into giving diverse characters their own cool.